


To a Better Place

by Major



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Drama, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-10 04:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12290814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: The lab blows up. It turns out to be exactly what Erin and Abby needed.





	To a Better Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Onthecyberseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onthecyberseas/gifts).



Even out of the immediate blast range, the explosion in the lab rumbled at Erin’s back and hit her like Jodie Miller shoulder-ramming her on the soccer field in eleventh grade.  Her shout of _No mercy!_ got stifled with a grunt as Abby had run up and kicked the ball into her gut.  It was the force of a hundred soccer balls that impacted her back and sent her sailing into the rolling white board and the wall behind it.

Thunder ripped through the other side of the lab in rolling booms, one destructive rumble after the other.  Curled in a heap on the floor, Erin looked up and over from the tucked in cover of her arm to see Abby lifted off the ground where she’d been standing over a microscope and thrown like a scarecrow in a strong wind over the lab station and to a rolling stop.  The shock from whatever disaster they found themselves in the middle of was shaken loose when the ceiling over Abby collapsed in on itself with the next boom and showered down on her in a landslide of dust and plaster.

Her heart threatened war on the rest of her, jumping quick and trying to stop with the force of the fear that shot through her.  Her palms vibrated with the low quakes as the last of the explosions came to a sputtering stop.  The area by the stairs was toast, and the back half was all but gutted.  Abby was completely invisible beneath the mountain of debris crushing her.  Erin got up, jittery but bruised at most, and tripped back down to her knees twice in her hurry to get to her since she’d lost her heels and couldn’t tear her eyes away from where Abby _was not moving_ in order to properly navigate the maze of debris blocking her path.

“Abby,” she said softly, too softly—weak enough that she wasn’t a hundred percent sure that her name hadn’t just gusted around her panicked mind.  She put some body into her next call as she dropped down beside the pile, “Abby!”

Kevin appeared, and Erin shouted at him to call 911.

“Right, what’s the number?” he asked.

The patience that his unnatural physical perfection normally granted him evaporated inside her desperation, and she shouted, “Kevin!”

“Right!”  He spun around and disappeared, but whether he was calling 911 or the operator to ask what the number for 911 was, she didn’t have the energy to divert her attention to it.

Holtzmann and Patty came barreling in, mouths agape with equal parts horror (Patty) and guilt (Holtzmann).

Before Holtzmann could deny it, Patty whirled on her, pointing.  “Don’t even lie!”

A large chunk of debris fell from the ceiling, and Holtzmann tugged the goggles strapped on top of her head down over her eyes.  “I don’t know how this happened.  It could’ve been anything.  The Butterfly Effect is a dangerous game of roulette.”

“Man, a butterfly didn’t do this!  But I’m pretty sure you and your cracky ass inventions did!”

One of her eyes looked huge behind the magnifying glass attached to the left side of the giant pair of goggles.  “I… plead no contest.”

“Guys!” Erin yelled, because it didn’t matter what happened, what caused it, or why her lungs felt like they were seizing up in her chest.  Abby was trapped.  Abby was hurt.  Abby was what mattered.

The others hurried over, and together they began lifting and moving large pieces up and off of the spot where Erin thought she was.  It happened so fast that she felt certain Abby was down there under the worst of it, suffocating or smashed like a bug, a poor beautiful Abby-shaped bug that didn’t deserve the fly swatter smack of the ceiling on top of her.  Erin’s chest ached with fear that turned to panic the longer they dug with no sight of her in the dark recesses below.

_Why isn’t she saying anything?_

The thought left a nasty, metallic taste of denial behind.  Abby couldn’t be dead, because…  Because Erin couldn’t live in a world where she couldn’t jump after Abby in time to save her.  She was jumping.  Abby had to reach back for her.

Tears sprung to her eyes as she moved from scared to terrified, but she wouldn't lose it.  She couldn't, so she wouldn't.  Her resolve was harder to maintain the longer they dug.  It just about broke when five feet to their left, flakes of white dust and plaster exploded upward with a groaning roar as Abby burst up and out of a much lighter, shallow scattering of debris—springing into a sitting position like a plastic menace in Whack-a-Mole.

Patty screamed and fell over the piece of wood she’d been lifting, taking on Holtzmann’s weight as she tripped sideways into her from the jolt.  Erin’s hands flew over her heart, but the gasp of fright was eclipsed by the flood of relief that kicked her heart back into a reassuring rhythm.  Abby was reaching.  Abby was okay.

She lost her footing and caught her balance in quick missteps over to where Abby was climbing to her feet, a head-to-toe grey dusty, frowning, beautiful mess.

Erin threw her arms around her in a bear trap hug, which she could have tried to escape if she had the combined requirements of wanting to and secretly training to bench press the weight of a piano, because that was what it would have taken to unlatch her in that first sweet moment of crazy-happy-horrified relief.

“You’re not dead.”  It came out quiet and wet with the unshed tears choking her up against her shoulder.

“No!” Abby snapped, arms finally making their way up and around her.  “But Holtzmann is about to be.”  She located the target over Erin’s shoulder and muttered quietly enough for just her to hear, “Hold me back, will you?  I mainlined _Orange Is the New Black_ last week.  I see the appeal of prison now, but it’s not for me.  I’m going to avoid it.  When possible.”

Erin released her, and Abby shot at Holtzmann like a coiled spring, but Erin dutifully held her unresisting arms back and stopped the pretend murder from taking place.

Holtzmann defended herself poorly and unconvincingly as Patty and Abby laid into her for nearly retiring their bodies to be donated to science long before their time, but Erin couldn’t follow the beats of the fight or bring herself to care.  The fear of losing Abby was still gripping her heart too tightly, making it hard to breathe steadily.  While the others hashed it out until Holtzmann finally admitted to making a ghost bomb that wasn’t _supposed_ to blow up anything beyond ectoplasm, Erin, lip trembling, accidentally cried just a little bit—barely.

Kevin reappeared with a happy smile and wave over at the newly emerged Abby.  “I called 411, but they want to know what number you're looking for before they'll give me the information.”

Abby looked at him and pulled her head back when his mistake clicked into place.  She waved up and down at her ash covered clothes and face.  “Look at me, Kevin.  Look at me!  I’m a giant test tube of asbestos.  I can’t with you right now.  I can’t.”

She glanced back at Erin for support, and did a double take on her crumbled expression.

“Erin?  Oh no.  What is it?  What kind of bomb was it?” she demanded accusingly of Holtzmann before spinning back towards Erin and looking around the remains of the gutted lab suspiciously.  “It’s toxic.  It’s got a toxic afterbang.  Guys, we gotta get out of here.  We are probably mutating as we speak.”

“We’re not…”  Erin closed her eyes, shaking her head, and feeling the exhausting weight of too much adrenaline starting to run off like a flood down a storm drain.  “We’re not mutating.”

“Well, if we’re not becoming mutants, what are you crying for?”

"I'm not crying; you're crying."  She tried to play it off with a roll of her eyes and a small sniffle, but not being awkward was never her strong suit.

"No, it's definitely you."  Abby pointed at her own eyes.  "These aren't tears.  It's crystallized mold I'll have to call a contractor to remove."

She shot a sharp look at Holtzmann whose eyes widened but fixated on the floor and refused to meet Abby's.

Erin waved a hand helplessly, shoulders hunched with fatigue.  “You scared me.  I thought you were dead.”

Surprise crossed her face, and Holtzmann got a shove when she punched her arm.  “Oh.  I’m not.  So that’s a plus.  You can stop writing the eulogy.  Really.  I don’t want you writing that thing when I croak out.  You’ll get sappy, and it’ll be a real downer.  I want to cross over to something way less lame than that.”

“I’ll write it,” Holtzmann offered.

“You will be dead long before I am!” Abby snapped with a finger in her face that made her big, magnified eye go crossed.  “Sooner or later,” she looped her finger around, “you’ll blow something up that can’t be glued back on.  Patty, you’ll have to write it.”

Her eyebrows shot up.  “I will.  That is a great honor.  I’ll start on it today.”  She immediately shook her head.  “Nah, better not.  If I come up with anything good, I’ll start kinda hoping you’ll kick it already so I can share it with people, and that’s just bad karma on my end.  I’ll keep a pen on me so I’ll be ready when you bite it.”

Abby looked a half second away from retracting her request, but the death talk riled Erin up worse.  A little sob escaped her, and Abby swung back in her direction.

“Oh for crying out loud,” she griped.  “Come here.  I didn’t know you cared this much.”

Erin sniffled and tucked herself under her proffered arm, feeling pitiful.  “Yes, you did.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to sprain something.  Get it together, lady.  It’ll take more than a building landing on me to take me out.”  Abby looked back at her through dusty lashes with warmth that belied the impatient pats on her back.

It took going back to Abby’s apartment, taking turns in the shower until they were both flesh colored again, and going up to the roof in their pajamas with takeout to restore Erin to a calm enough state to laugh without worrying that it would crack into a grimace.

“And you guys tried to cheap out when the government left us in charge of insurance,” Erin scolded.

“Yeah, yeah.  Being a goody two-shoes, annoying planner person paid off.  This once!”  Abby raised a finger to squash any possible ego growth at the start.

Erin smiled but immediately tensed and held her hands out in concerned protest as Abby hoisted herself up to sit on the edge of the roof with her carton of noodles and chopsticks.  “Oh, don’t.  Please don't—”

“Don’t what?”  Abby raised one hand around her ear to listen closely.  “Don’t fuss?  Yeah, you totally shouldn’t, I agree.”

With a halfhearted frown that really wanted to be a smile, Erin went over and leaned her hip against the spot where she was sitting.  If she started to tip over, she could at least make a grab for her.  Setting her food aside, she leaned on the edge and looked out over the street that was black except for the streetlamps and the stars overhead that the city tried to block out.  The city could block a lot out when left to itself.

“On a scale of one to ten, how scared were you back there, thinking I’d gotten smacked under the roof’s vengeful boot?”

“A hundred,” Erin answered immediately, eyes rolling up to the sky in thought as she added to the stress level, “and fifty billion… hundred thousand million.  Infinity.”

She shot her a faux impressed smile and nod.  “Wow.  So you were so scared that it fried your brain into not working correctly anymore.  Kevin 2.0?”

“I love him.”  It almost pained her how innocently terrible he was at… mostly everything.

“Yeah, he’s great,” Abby agreed.  “I’m not sure if he or Holtzmann will accidentally kill us first, but—yeah, great guy.”

They fell into laughter, and Erin shot her a knowing look.  Abby’s hand came down and covered hers where it was resting beside her leg.  The warmth of it settled a smile on her lips as the laughter subsided.

Abby squeezed her hand.  “Hey, but really.  You don’t have to worry about me.  I’m durable.  I’m not even sure if I’m aging.  Look at my yearbook picture.  I could walk into any school around here with a backpack and no one would call me out.”

Erin wouldn’t go back to high school for a Nobel Prize, but ageless Abby certainly was the best part of those years.

She nodded.  “You’re holding up.  I think you might actually be going in reverse.  You look better than ever if you ask me, which you should.  My opinion on this is relevant.”

“Give me a couple years.  I’ll be an infant.”

They leaned into each other and laughed the way they had done hundreds of times before, thousands.  Except this time, Abby’s hand didn’t let go of hers, and it was harder to look away.  Erin didn’t want to.

There was a seriousness to her words when Abby assured her, “You don’t have to worry about me, Erin.  I’m not going anywhere.  Life is _pretty_ good these days.  I’m not giving it up without a hell of a fight, probably stick around for a decent haunt.  Get ready for a possession.  I’ll spin your head around, make you projectile vomit worse than science camp that one summer when you decided to drink that moonshine to impress Billy What’s-His-Name.”

Erin shook her head, amusement and humiliation tugging her expression in different directions.  “I didn’t do that to impress Billy Thorne.  I did it to impress you.”

“I was impressed!” Abby awarded her.  “All the way up until I was holding your hair back in the bushes behind our cabin, it was very impressive.”

God.  Erin squeezed her eyes shut against the memory, but the feel of Abby’s fingers moving to twine with her own brought her gaze back to hers.  She was struck then by how different everything was now and still very much the same.

Abby’s eyes were searching but guarded.  The fence that usually kept their touches brief and hearts in check was left open from the panic she felt earlier for her best friend, her oldest friend, the person who with one accident could have upended her entire life and turned it into something ugly and unlivable.  There was a silent pact between them to close that gate when one of them got too close, fell too hard and _almost_ changed everything.  Ruining their friendship was the worst that could happen.  Fear was a funny thing when it clarified that the worst that could happen was nowhere close to _the worst_ that could happen.  Erin let the gate swing open as it may.

“I’m not going anywhere either,” she said and held Abby’s gaze even though her heart was chasing the jumpy fear for Abby’s life away with a hard, urgent need to risk everything when they’d spent their whole lives quietly risking nothing.

Cool evening wind tossed her hair in her face, and Abby reached out to catch it between her fingers.  And pulled.

“Ow!” Erin complained, but before she could properly chastise her with a lecture in respecting her low pain threshold, Abby leaned down and kissed her.

The first press of her lips against hers lit a match against a lifetime of memories, little skips in time from bumping shoulders at the mall with food court cokes in their hands, to locker gossip in high school, all the little fights and the one big one when Erin went her separate way, rekindling their friendship, and letting themselves—now that they were older, maybe not wiser, but braver—be who they were and how they felt without trying to control it.

Erin kissed her back for all the times she hadn’t kissed her first.  It was the kind of thing they would have laughed off when they were sixteen, because lies were cheap and the truth came with promises.  Erin was ready to make those promises now, so when Abby drew back just enough to meet her eyes—a question pressing back at her—Erin tilted her face up, reached for Abby like she always did.  And pulled.


End file.
